'A Monster Calls' by Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness' "Chaos Walking" trilogy, completed in 2010, established his strength as a dystopian chronicler, but this story is firmly rooted — a plant metaphor proves apt here — in actuality. Conor, 14, lives with his mother, whose long chemotherapy is not going well. Conor's grandmother, not a sympathetic character, is visiting, and school bullies taunt him about his mother's illness. The first chapter begins, "The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do." Ness was "inspired by an idea from" British writer Siobhan Dowd, whose untimely death in 2007 saddened readers and critics. But the quality of the writing, as Conor's nightmares finally aid him, is neither secondhand nor derivative.